I still remember that day as if it just happened yesterday. The day when everything changed. The day the affair I once thought impossible was finally exposed—in a way I never expected.
My second child, only two years old at the time, was playing with his mother’s phone. Suddenly, he cried because the video he was watching got interrupted by a WhatsApp notification. I went over to help him. But then my eyes caught something. The notification was locked. That was when I first learned that there was a feature to lock messages. A curiosity I couldn’t ignore crept into me.
I tried opening the settings, and to my surprise, my fingerprint managed to unlock it. And… astaghfirullah. Sweet messages with another man appeared before me. The world seemed to collapse right in front of my eyes.
My chest burned. My heart pounded wildly. I scrolled through the screen, reading message after message. From the lighthearted ones to the ones that almost ripped my soul out of my body. Their conversations had been going on for four months. Four months… I couldn’t believe it. My wife—whom I had cherished, loved, and always regarded as a righteous woman—had been hiding such a dark secret.
I immediately took the kids to their grandmother’s house, which was right next door. Then I stared at my wife’s face as she slept. I woke her up, and without saying much, I showed her the chat. She burst into tears, kneeling at my feet. She begged me to hit her, but I just stood there, silent, holding back the storm raging inside my chest.
I asked her to open the chat again, but in fear, she deleted everything instead. My anger grew. I confiscated her phone. I recovered all the deleted chats, saved them on my phone and my computer. The evidence had to remain.
That night, I cried silently. Tears kept falling without stopping. She kept hugging me, apologizing, begging me to hit her. But I didn’t. I never would.
I interrogated her down to the root. Since when, where, how many times, how far it had gone. Until there was no space left for her to hide anything. I thought they hadn’t gone as far as sleeping together… but it turned out, the most painful part happened on her birthday—the very day that I, her husband, had never celebrated because of our beliefs. But that man… he wished her a happy birthday. And gave her more than that.
The next day, I drove alone. My one intention: to confront that man and beat him. I drove while crying. I called him, cursed him, even though he kept apologizing. But halfway there, I stopped. I thought about my children. I realized that if I went through with it, maybe my pride would be satisfied, but the future of my family would be shattered.
I turned the car around. I went to my wife’s friend’s house. There, I cried and told her everything. She listened wisely and advised me not to spread this story around, but to bring it to my in-laws.
That very afternoon, my wife and I went to her parents’ house, about 100 km away from home. I left the children behind. When we arrived, she immediately cried and hugged her father. We all sat together. I told them everything. Her parents advised her. They asked me to be patient, to try to fix things, not to throw her away.
The days that followed were days full of pain. But I chose to stay. I chose to forgive. Because I wanted my children to grow up with both their parents together. Let the wound stay in my heart, as long as my children could still smile.
And miraculously, from that day on, my wife changed. From someone who used to get angry easily, she became gentle and patient. From someone careless in her prayers, she never missed them again. She became more obedient, more caring, more loving. I kept her disgrace hidden. No one knew, except her parents and one of her siblings. To the world, she remained an honorable woman.
Now we are rebuilding the castle that once crumbled. From zero. I am the husband who chose to forgive, to swallow the pain, for the sake of my children’s future and because of my faith—that maybe this was God’s way of erasing our sins, and turning our lives toward a better path.
Photo by Tá Focando on Unsplash
